There's something about Jane
Nearly 200 years after her death, Jane Austen has become one of the most widely read authors in history. Kerrie Waterworth finds out why she continues to appeal, generation after generation.
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Book review: The Lie
It is not easy to decide which lie Helen Dunmore was talking about when she titled her new book.
The dark beneath the light
British-based writer Tom Rob Smith tells Stephen Jewell how real life drama inspired his new novel in a way that disturbed him far more than he expected.
Luminaries setting gets Catton visit
Award-winning author Eleanor Catton spent yesterday in Hokitika, the setting of her critically acclaimed novel The Luminaries.
Celebrities who have written kid's books
Keith Richards is releasing a children's book in September, but he is not the first celebrity to venture into the world of children's publishing.
12 Questions: Peter Williams
Peter Williams, QC, turns 80 this year and is finishing a new book of stories from his long legal career.
Karl Ove Knausgaard: A writer's life
It’s raw, relentless and, at an epic 3500 pages, a best-selling literary phenomenon. But the brutal honesty of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle has shocked many — and alienated half of his family, writes Hermione Hoby.
Book review: The Last Word
Consider being commissioned and hard-pressed to write the biography of an old, famous, living author.
Ben Atkins: One night out sleuthing
Fledgling Auckland writer Ben Atkins talks to Craig Sisterson about the crime novel he has been working on since he was 15.
Lazy Days: Painting the kiwi lifestyle
Images reproduced with permission from Lazy Days: Painting the kiwi lifestyle by Graham Young, published by New Holland, $29.99.
Book review: Terms & Conditions
Extensive footnotes make this hard to follow, as Nicky Pellegrino discovers.
Book review: A Beautiful Truth
Walt and Judy, of 1970s small-town Vermont, can't conceive a child. For all their mutual tenderness, life has become just "a collection of gestures and habits". So they adopt.
Did dead novelist solve PM's cold case?
A Swedish newspaper has intensified a decades-old allegation by dead crime novelist Stieg Larsson about who was behind the 1986 murder of the country's Prime Minister.
Toying with times past
Miranda Carter read history while at Oxford and came to writing after a career in journalism.
Book review: Empty Mansions
The wealth gap is provoking much contemporary anxiety. But the financial imbalance between, say, Bill Gates or Warren Buffet and the Big-Mac slinger is a shadow of that which existed between the first American capitalist barons.
Terror scholar explores a dark fictional world
In Richard Jackson's book about a terrorist, sections of text are covered by heavy black lines.
How to spoil Game of Thrones
Have you spoiled Game of Thrones for yourself? Chris Schulz has. Here's his cautionary tale.
Henning Mankell: Chronicler of his own decline
After years of exploring Sweden’s darkest fears in his fiction, Henning Mankell, the creator of Wallander, faces his own anxiety after being diagnosed with cancer. Andrew Anthony writes.
Fifty Shades one of the most borrowed books
Literary sensation Fifty Shades Of Grey - which has already set sales records - has become one of the UK's most borrowed library books.
How to reinvent yourself
Three Aucklanders tell Alan Perrott how they reinvented themselves.
School of hard knocks
Hope and hopelessness make a funny yet thoughtful combination, writes Rebecca Barry Hill.